Ms. Higgins: Good morning, and thank
you both for coming. How did you happen to get here in Monmouth County?
How did your people get to Monmouth County? We'd like to know how you
got here.

Ms. Stuhl: I married Al.

Ms. Higgins: How did you meet Al?

Ms. Stuhl: How did you come to Monmouth
County?

Mr. Stuhl: That wasn't the question.
First let me come to Monmouth County then we'll meet, that came later.
I came in 1940 because my father decided that he'd like to have a poultry
farm. I think his reasoning was that, having experienced the Russian Revolution
to some extent, it's better to be on a farm then in a town. You eat better.
I think that's the way he thought, but in any case he had decided that
he was going to leave New York City because he had friends out here already.
I was only seventeen, just graduated high school, and I ran the farm.

Ms. Higgins: What kind of a farm did
you have?

Mr. Stuhl: We just had white leghorns
mostly, and we did occasionally raise some broilers, but mostly it was
leghorns. It was an egg farm, not a meat farm.

Ms. Higgins: Where was your major market?

Mr. Stuhl: The major market was probably
New York, I would guess, because we had a feed co-op and an egg co-op.

Ms. Higgins: You bought feed and sold
eggs?

Mr. Stuhl: Yes. Our eggs were distributed
and they were picked up, processed, and distributed by the egg co-op.

Ms. Higgins: What town was this, Al?

Mr. Stuhl: We lived in Howell Township
on Bennett Road next to Sam Bennett. He could've given you a long history.

Ms. Higgins: Was it successful? How
long did you run the farm?

The Stuhl farm, 1945

Mr. Stuhl: I would say the farm was
successful because in 1945 when I came home from the war, my father said,
"The farm is paid off." We did it without selling eggs on the
black market, too, which is what most farmers did. During the war there
was a black market in food, and people were getting all sorts of things
that they might not have been able to get by the rules.

Ms. Higgins: Did you need coupons for
eggs?

Mr. Stuhl: No, I don't think so.

Ms. Higgins: Just money.

Mr. Stuhl: I enlisted in the army reserves
in 1942. I was called up in March of 1943, or actually April 1st of 1943.
So I spent about a little over thirty months in the army.

Ms. Higgins: Where did you see duty?

Mr. Stuhl: The Caribbean area. I got
into the medics by accident, I guess, no will of mine. I thought I'd get
into the Signal Corps because I had trained for it a little bit. But I
got into the medics. The boat left New Orleans and headed straight for
South America, and low and behold, we disembarked in Trinidad. So I got
to see Trinidad, and there one day I was at an assembly and they called
out my name and I became a medical lab technician. I went into training
in Trinidad and that was my career as a soldier. Most of the time we spent
on the island of Aruba.

Ms. Higgins: It was an oil town, right?

Mr. Stuhl: Definitely. It had the biggest
refinery in the world. We had a small station hospital to serve the people
who guarded the refinery and I guess there was some coast artillery there.
I don't really know much about that.

Ms. Higgins: And then you went back
to Howell to run this poultry farm?

Mr. Stuhl: What happened was in 1945,
I asked for a transfer to Puerto Rico. I thought I would go to the University
of Puerto Rico. Here I was sitting around, when I just wanted to go to
school. Then I got a furlough and got married.

Ms. Higgins: So how did you meet?

Ms. Stuhl: His father and my father
were cousins and his father and mother came to visit us in Quebec in 1941.
We corresponded by mail after that visit.

Mr. Stuhl: I went to visit you in 1942
in Quebec.

Ms. Stuhl: When they came to visit they
took pictures. One of them had a picture of me and he liked the picture
so he came the following June to visit.

Mr. Stuhl: We started corresponding
by mail.

Ms. Stuhl: It was a letter writing romance,
which lasted about three years. When he came to visit, he wanted to get
married, but I had just started college, and I was not getting married.

Ms. Higgins: Where did you live?

Ms. Stuhl: I lived in Quebec City, Canada.

Ms. Higgins: You went back and forth
to Quebec with this romance?

Mr. Stuhl: Before I got called up, I
went to visit her again. The first time I visited her was in 1942, and
the second time was in 1943.

Ms. Stuhl: And in the fall he came up.
It was the summer, actually, in 1942.

Mr. Stuhl: I came the summer of 1942,
right.

Ms. Stuhl: He wanted to get married.

Mr. Stuhl: Two trips by bus. By bus
and train.

Ms. Higgins: All those letters. Where
were you in college? What were you studying?

Ms. Stuhl: I went to St. George, when
it was a college. It is now Concordia University Montreal. I was studying
chemistry and biology with a minor in English. I couldn't spell at that
time, but I did very well in school. I was born in Romania. My family
came to Canada in November of 1938. November 3rd, we landed in Quebec
at night.

Ms. Higgins: What language did you speak?

Ms. Stuhl: At that point, I spoke Russian,
Romanian, and French.

Ms. Higgins: French must have enabled
you to function in Quebec.

Ms. Stuhl: We had been to Canada before.
We had come in 1930; my father did not like it, and we went back to Europe.
So I started school in Montreal. I went to first grade in Montreal. We
lived in Montreal at that time. And then we went back to Europe in 1932.

Mr. Stuhl: Your mother was the hero
who made the family leave a second time.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, she insisted that we
go. She did all the papers. My father was not very anxious to come, but
she saw the war coming, and she was getting us out of there. So we came
back to Canada in 1938. And my uncle, my father's brother, had a store
in Quebec, a big store at the time. He gave my father a job and provided
us with an apartment with enough groceries and canned goods that we had
it through the whole war. We were never short of food. There was a closet
underneath the staircase going upstairs, and that thing was full of food.
He made it very nice for us. I cannot complain. And my aunt took me to
school and she made me Anna. On my papers, it says Ann but she decided
I would be called Annie and she was a Canadian born and she decided she
liked Anna better so that's how I became Anna. It was different. I did
high school in three years. Then I did a fourth year in Quebec because
they started putting in what they called grade twelve, which was equivalent
to first year college, and from there you went to second year college.
Then I went to Montreal to go to college.

Ms. Higgins: Did you do anything with
chemistry?

Ms. Stuhl: I worked at a paper mill
one summer. That's about the only time I actually used my chemistry knowledge.
After I had children, I thought of going back to school and doing something
with chemistry. At first I thought I would become a Home Economics teacher
because I liked that, too. I like cooking. I went to Georgian Court and
I had a bachelors degree in chemistry and biology and they wanted me to
start college all over again. So I said, "Forget it." And then
I took an aptitude course in the night program. And they tested me and
thought I'd come out good as a librarian. So I investigated going to library
school, and I did. There Dean Martin encouraged me to go; he registered
me right there and then. He registered me for fifteen credits the first
semester. I started that first week, the second week I cut it down to
nine.

The Stuhl family, 1955

Ms. Higgins: Now what year was this
about?

Ms. Stuhl: I started in 1957.

Ms. Higgins: So you had been married
and had children?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, I had two children at
the time.

Mr. Stuhl: She was the biggest graduate
there.

Ms. Stuhl: I was nine months pregnant
when I graduated. I had my third child in 1959, and graduated in 1959.

Ms. Higgins: Was Al still running the
poultry farm at that time?

Ms. Stuhl: At that point, yes, but he
was working off the farm. We still had chickens at the time.

Mr. Stuhl: The farm business had not
been too good. We were paying price supports for grain, and eggs were
not supported. I can't imagine how people make a living with eggs today
at the prices they are. But any case I culled chickens, separating the
good from the bad for about ten years, I guess from 1951 to 1961.

Ms. Stuhl: You went there when Dari
was born.

Ms. Higgins: For a company?

Mr. Stuhl: For a company and then for
myself.

Ms. Higgins: What company was it? The
Monmouth County Company?

Mr. Stuhl: No. Ultra Life was the name
of the company. And that company sold a feed additive to the co-op. When
the co-op started to buy from this company in East St. Louis Illinois,
they provided a service. They taught us how to do this thing called internal
culling: palpating the organs of the birds.

Ms. Higgins: And you could tell which
chickens were going to be producers?

Mr. Stuhl: Well, there's what you call
inside characteristics and outside characteristics, and you combine them
both. And you can detect if there were any problems with the chicken by
exploring internally.

Ms. Higgins: And what happened to the
chickens that didn't make the grade?

Mr. Stuhl: They went to the butcher.
Basically it was done when people were going to keep birds over through
a molt for the second laying season, which is no longer done today. So
that business is all over. That would be good to select breeding chickens
by using that technique. You could pick out things that you could not
see externally.

Ms. Higgins: And during this time frame,
say the mid 1940s to the late 1950s, you lived in Howell?

Mr. Stuhl: We lived in Howell until
1967.

Ms. Stuhl: Then we moved to Ocean Township.

Ms. Higgins: Why did you move to Ocean
Township from Howell?

Ms. Stuhl: Well, at that time I was
working.

Mr. Stuhl: We sold the farm.

Ms. Stuhl: We sold the farm, but I liked
the school system in Ocean Township at that time. It was one of the better
ones.

Mr. Stuhl: She decided to become a librarian.
I decided to become an Industrial Arts teacher. We both took this night
course at Red Bank High and we spoke to the guidance director who led
us, very nice man, and we both got steered in the direction that we finally
took.

Ms. Higgins: You taught Industrial Arts
for a long time, didn't you?

Mr. Stuhl: Yes I taught for twenty-four
years, but it wasn't all Industrial Arts because I ended up in the Essex
County Youth House. And I taught in a classroom for about ten years. I
was there for about twenty years.

Ms. Higgins: To juvenile delinquents?

Mr. Stuhl: Right. I used to commute
to Newark.

Ms. Stuhl: Basically that's why I selected
Ocean Township. They had one of the best schools going including Tinton
Falls, Shrewsbury. That area had good schools, but Freehold did not impress
me. Because I got around on the bookmobile, my first job in the library
was going around to the various towns in Monmouth County with the bookmobile. I didn't drive. I just met somebody who says they remembered me
from the bookmobile. "You used to drive that thing?" he said.
I never drove it. Don Price was the driver.

Ms. Higgins: There were not any of the
branches then that there are now. There was only the library in Freehold.
Tell us a little bit about the library when you started.

Mr. Stuhl: Before you start the library,
let me tell my story. In 1940, I used to read in the New York Public Library
and get my books from there in Manhattan and in Brooklyn. I lived in Brooklyn.
So when I came out here I was interested in a library and I was informed
that there was a branch at Ms. Foreman's house and she was on Howell Station
Road. In her home she had a couple of bookcases with books and I could
go there select books from there, and make requests, which she got for
me. At that time, I was reading political economy, and she got me the
books.

Ms. Higgins: Where did she get the books?
From the State Library?

Ms. Stuhl: Monmouth County.

Ms. Higgins: Oh, through Freehold. Okay.

Ms. Stuhl: This was known as the station.
By the time I started there were some. I still had a few stations, but
mostly they were gone.

Mr. Stuhl: This was just a little library
in the Foreman's house.

Ms. Stuhl: It wasn't even a library;
there were people on porches.

Mr. Stuhl: A place where you could get
books, and you had contact through the one on Main Street, right.

Ms. Stuhl: They had pick up and delivery.

Ms. Higgins: bookmobile pick up and
delivery.

Mr. Stuhl: No, bookmobile came later.

Ms. Stuhl: They had bookmobile then,
too.

Mr. Stuhl: Not too extensive.

Ms. Stuhl: But not for the public.
By the time I came, every little town had at least a station.

Monmouth County Library Bookmobile,
1966

Ms. Higgins: How frequently would the
bookmobile visit a station?

Ms. Stuhl: At the beginning we used
only one bookmobile.

Ms. Higgins: Who was director of the
library when you came?

Ms. Stuhl: Julia Killian. She hired
me. I can't remember statistics as such, but we did have what we called
stations. In Ocean Township in the upstairs of the firehouse, there was
one lady, Mrs. Levey, who took care of the books. And she sat there; she
was basically a guardian of books. She didn't move, but she changed books.
We used to go there at least every other month and then she could go on
the bookmobile and select whatever books she wanted from the bookmobile.
In addition, she could order. I don't quite remember how they sent in
requests, but then we would search them through our facility and then
they would go to the State Library if we didn't have them. And whatever
we could we provided. We did not have as many duplicate copies as we did
later so when we started, it was hard to get the best sellers. You got
one book, and it had to do the library in Freehold, the old little house,
whatever you want to call it, on Broad Street, and they also filled the
shelves of the bookmobile so there was constantly a battle for new books.

Ms. Higgins: It sounds very familiar
even today even though we do buy many duplicate copies, there's still
the battle for the new books. Was best seller reading such a mania then
as it is now?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, always.

Mr. Stuhl: The Book of the Month Club was really
big in those days.

Ms. Higgins: Oh, yes, and the Literary
Guild. As you say, we can pick up the statistics in the books, but can
you tell us a little something about the flavor of when you would pull
up to this station? Would the public come on to the bookmobile and select?

Ms. Stuhl: No. Not there. Besides that
we had a regular schedule with about thirty to forty stops in the different
areas. I added many more because as I was doing this, all these developments
started cropping up. And where there's a development, there are children,
and they like to have a bookmobile around, and so it came to Manalapan
for instance. One of the biggest users was Neptune Township when it was
part of the county system. There were two stops that I remember.

Mr. Stuhl: But you used to go to Farmingdale
Borough. The hook up there was really interesting.

Ms. Stuhl: And in Neptune Township,
for instance, we had a bookmobile stop in Hamilton Gardens as it was
called. It was a development. And in somewhere between two and a half
hours, I would say, we used to circulate over 1,000 books. And there was
only a driver and myself. It got so bad that I used to get help. Another
driver would come and help us, because not only did you have to get the
books out, you had to card the books that came in and put them back on
the shelves, so that somebody else could have them. There were only 2,000
plus books on the bookmobile. It was an interesting job; I met lots and
lots of people, and people still recognize me from so many years ago.

Ms. Higgins: Did the bookmobile travel
up in the Bayshore or Middletown?

Ms. Stuhl: Not Middletown. There were
libraries in Keansburg which we put in, actually, and we developed it,
it was in the Borough Hall. Union Beach had a little library that somebody
started, and its now much larger than it was. Hazlet had bookmobile stops.
Holmdel didn't have bookmobile stops, but they did finally have a little
library.

Ms. Higgins: Did you stop in the street?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, on the street on the
corner.

Mr. Stuhl: That's one of the reasons
we moved to Wanamassa. She knew the area.

Ms. Stuhl: I knew the area. I knew Wanamassa;
Oakhurst, Ocean, too. They didn't have any library at all except for this
little library over the firehouse in Wanamassa, which didn't do much business,
and was only open like four hours. Deal had a library also in Borough
Hall. They'd give them a room that had shelves; we provided the books,
and the lady opened it, I think one afternoon and one evening. I think
Interlaken still has that very part time library in Borough Hall.

Ms. Higgins: How about Atlantic Highlands
and Highlands?

Ms. Stuhl: There was a library in Atlantic
Highlands. Highlands, I don't remember, I think we had a bookmobile in
the Highlands for a little bit. But it did not work out.

The inside
of the bookmobile, 1966

Ms. Higgins: So those bookmobiles are
like a traveling ambassador for the library system, right?

Ms. Stuhl: Sort of.

Mr. Stuhl: It was very popular.

Ms. Higgins: Did people line up to get
in?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes. They did a story on
my bookmobile with Donald in the Asbury Park Press. The pictures of all
these ladies with the carriages, adults and children came to the bookmobile.

Mr. Stuhl: Did Mary ever go on the bookmobile?

Ms. Stuhl: Mary Calleto, Rife her name
is now. Now maybe she would come in and talk to you. You know where she
lives? She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. But we do see her.

Mr. Stuhl: She comes here.

Ms. Stuhl: She hasn't been here in a
long time.

Ms. Higgins: Were your functions at
the library limited to the bookmobile?

Ms. Stuhl: At the beginning, yes, but
the library was not so organized as it is now. I did cataloging. Catherine
Mahar used to type the cards. I mean it was a very mom and pop operation
compared to what it is now. Everybody did a little bit of everything.

Ms. Higgins: As the branches were built,
did the bookmobile service stop?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, and expanded elsewhere
because Ocean Township was the first branch we had. The towns built the
branches; we did not build buildings.

Ms. Higgins: Did they come to you for
guidance when they built them?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes. And we worked with Ocean
Township. I remember it was our first branch.

Ms. Higgins: That's pretty exciting.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, it was very exciting.
It was back in 1966 that it opened.

Ms. Higgins: When did the county start
staffing the branches?

Ms. Stuhl: Right away. That was one
of my ideas. When I went to graduate school you had to do a thesis,
and it had to be on the place where you worked so I did where I had volunteered.
I don't know how many hours I spent here. And the library and I go through
sort of my own critique of what they did, and what I think should be done.
And I came to the conclusion that staffing the branches was the best thing
to do, because you can do with less books, if you have the right person
helping.

Ms. Higgins: So the whole extension
system developed around this concept?

Ms. Stuhl: I became the extension librarian,
and then I became the assistant director.

Ms. Higgins: Well, before we talk about
your duties as assistant director, which I do want to get to, tell me
something about the luncheons. The luncheons for the members. Members,
of course, have a different political relationship with the county library.

Ms. Stuhl: Well, member libraries were
the libraries that existed before the county really blossomed. County
library came in to existence in 1924, I think; they didn't start working
until 1925. So it was a different sort of attitude, you know, they were
there first. And we didn't really trespass, but we provided additional
services, and we kept thinking of what kind of services to do. And we
developed all kinds. There was a time when we did displays for them, of
course, and we did requests, that's an ongoing business. And then we provided
them with new books. And through the years we gave them McNaughton, for
instance, which was a rental type of thing. The county paid for it. The
members got so many new books per month. They were all best sellers. And
then they could buy them at a reduced price if they wanted to keep them,
or send them back. That worked very well, and after a while our budget
increased enough so we could buy the copies for them. We started appropriating
budgets for each branch for books. The library still does this. Jack Livingstone
was very, very insistent that they had to keep in the budget. I don't
know how it is now.

Ms. Higgins: When did Monmouth County
Library start providing children services?

Ms. Stuhl: Anoter service I keep thinking
we started was a part time librarian doing children's service. I don't
know what year.

Mr. Stuhl: Mary was one of your first
ones.

Ms. Stuhl: Mary, yes. She never did
branches though, she did outside summer reading story hours. She did story
hours for the bookmobile for me.

Ms. Higgins: bookmobile provided story
hours as well as books?

Ms. Stuhl: In the summer, yes. But only
certain places where they would let us have a lawn. You couldn't do it
on the bookmobile. You couldn't seat fifty to sixty kids on the floor
in the bookmobile, they would be squashed. People were very nice. They
were very happy to have the service, and when bookmobile came, Mary used
to come. I have pictures of them sitting on the lawn in Yorktown in Manalapan.
I'll never forget it.

Ms. Higgins: Because you didn't have
a building?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, there was no building.
Once we started having buildings, and we saw how nice it was to have story
hours, we started sending librarians out first to do just story hours,
and then to work a day in the library, and be sort of in charge of children
services, and that increased in some places where there was a children's
librarian on duty all the time.

Ms. Higgins: One of the more appealing
aspects of being a member librarian is that the county provides
both the books and children services. Of course now we're offering a wide
variety of automated services, as well.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, now we're doing a lot
more with computers and the charging system. I mean I remember when we
had to fight to get a Gaylord charging supplier for the members. We rented
it. You didn't buy it; it wasn't that expensive, but at that time, it
was a lot of money. When I came to the county library in 1959 the total
budget was $90,000.

Mr. Stuhl: A librarian only made four
to five thousand dollars.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes. $4,640 was my beginning
salary.

Ms. Higgins: For a graduate.

Mr. Stuhl: A graduate, yes, with a master's
degree.

Ms. Higgins: Was it full time work,
Anna?

Ms. Stuhl: Full time at that time was
four days nine to five and a half an extra day because we worked one night
nine to nine.

Ms. Higgins: Even then the Monmouth
County Library was open at night.

Ms. Stuhl: Friday nights usually in
the beginning, and then when we got bigger, it became three nights a week,
now it's five nights a week.

Ms. Higgins: You were the branch librarian
in charge of the branches, weren't you?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, the extension librarian
was in charge of the branches.

Ms. Higgins: What was the second branch?

Ms. Stuhl: The second one actually was
Allentown.

Ms. Higgins: How did that happened?

Ms. Stuhl: Because I think partially
they were still in the old building but they got the chance to buy the
church where they are now. At first it was one room in a house, before
it was in the church. It was small and crowded, and then they moved
to the church. But they decided they wanted to be a branch, shortly after
Ocean. Then we got Oceanport. They came in as a branch. And after that
Wall, then Hazlet, and then Holmdel. And then I think Marlboro and Colts
Neck.

Ms. Higgins: This was all during the
1960s and early 1970s. The members were contributing the tax dollars and
getting services, and the branches were setting up.

Mr. Stuhl: What about Neptune?

Ms. Stuhl: Neptune didn't have a branch.
Neptune pulled out.

Mr. Stuhl: And Belmar pulled out. And
they're not part of the county system.

Ms. Stuhl: Neptune was a shame, because
we did have a lot of bookmobile stops and a lot of usage. It was personality
feud, probably. And Belmar definitely the same.

Ms. Higgins: This decision influences
a lot of people, a lot of children, and a lot of adults, to this day.

Ms. Stuhl: I don't know if they were
happy with it.

Ms. Higgins: So at this time was Headquarters
in the old supermarket building?

Ms. Stuhl: No, before that the main
library was on Broad Street, and then we had an annex on Marcy Street
where we did the book processing and extension services.

Ms. Higgins: Two separate buildings.

Ms. Stuhl: It was a nuisance: it was
a problem to coordinate.

Ms. Higgins: When did Mr. Livingstone
become the director?

Ms. Stuhl: Eastern Branch opened in
1968. He came the year before, 1967.

Ms. Higgins: He put a lot of energy
into developing the library with you.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, he was a good businessman,
and a good supervisor.

Ms. Higgins: And tell us about Eastern
Branch. How did that get started? You were also a member of the Friends
of the Monmouth County Library Association. Oh, before we leave the members,
I brought it up before and reminded myself to go back to it. Talk to us
a bit about the luncheons that you personally provided for the members.

Ms. Stuhl: One of the things that was
a problem to me personally is that none of the librarians ever got to
see each other; they just didn't know each other. You know you worked
there, and I worked here: our paths didn't cross. And since most of the
member librarians were not library school graduates, they didn't have
this feeling of networking, if that's the word to use. And so I thought
it would be nice to get them all together, and what better way then to
make a luncheon and invite them all over? So every year before Christmas,
I did that, and I used to cook it all by myself.

Ms. Higgins: What a labor of love! What
would you serve, Anna?

Ms. Stuhl: The library is still my labor
of love. He gets mad at me because I'm still a little involved with the
Friends, and I still come here. I sold Friends Cookbooks at Barnes and
Noble.

Ms. Higgins: How did that go?

Ms. Stuhl: They sold six books.

Mr. Stuhl: About those luncheons: she
used to buy chickens.

Ms. Stuhl: The county paid for the food;
I kept receipts and they paid for the food.

Mr. Stuhl: She served boneless chicken.
We used to cut open the thighs.

Ms. Stuhl: He used to bone the chicken
for me, that's why he remembers.

Mr. Stuhl: And she wraps them up. She
made a complete dinner.

Ms. Higgins: The member luncheons
were so famous. Did you have any kind of bread with it?

Ms. Stuhl: I didn't bake bread in those
days as much. I made rice. I may have baked bread, but I don't remember.

Ms. Higgins: What kitchen was this prepared
in?

Mr. Stuhl: She cooked everything at
home, and we'd bring it.

Ms. Stuhl: Jack Livingstone would pick
me up in the morning with all these things to be all warmed up. I even
had a rotisserie oven because I needed to heat some things. It worked
out very well.

Ms. Higgins: Everyone had a great time.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, and the member librarians
got to know one other, which makes it much easier. You know if I think
you may have something or you may know something, I call you because I
know who you are. I have a face to connect to the name. It became much
more personal. I think they still have the luncheons.

Ms. Higgins: Now they're catered. The
members get gifts, as well.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes. Well, we would get calendars
from the book distributor we were buying from. We'd give them out.

Ms. Higgins: Did you bring desserts
as well?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, cakes, sure.

Mr. Stuhl: That's the first thing she
always does: get desserts.

Ms. Stuhl: I made a complete luncheon
with some things before, and a main course. It was buffet style.

Ms. Higgins: And who set all the tables?
How many people would you serve?

Ms. Stuhl: I don't know: anywhere between
thirty to fifty people.

Ms. Higgins: That's a lot of chicken.
Would they bring their staff?

Ms. Stuhl: Some of them would bring
their staff, some didn't.

Ms. Higgins: Well, as I say, that luncheon
is an ongoing institution.

Ms. Stuhl: It was a labor of love, there's
no question about it. But they remember it. It did make an impact. It
touched people, and I really feel good about that. It made such a difference.
I would visit the member libraries and spend time trying to help them
organize, trying to help them catalog, whatever jobs they needed help
on. And you know when you could say, well, so and so in this other town
is doing it that way, it wasn't like criticizing them, because you're
telling them something is being done differently. Then they listened because,
they knew who the other person was: they had met at a member luncheon.

Ms. Higgins: Can you tell us about the
energy of the Friends of the Monmouth County Library Association?

Ms. Stuhl: The Friends were very influential
in getting Eastern Branch built. They did a lot of PR work, a lot of pushing,
and so on. They went to Freeholder meetings. I was not that involved in
it. I had children, so I was busy. I didn't run around to meetings at
night too often if I didn't have to. And so I don't really know the inside
story.

Mr. Stuhl: Tell Flora about how you
used to bring in the branches to the county.

Ms. Stuhl: Oh, that was later, that
was here. Not in this building, but in the other, the Grand Union, where
I did have room.

Mr. Stuhl: She got a carpet downstairs.

Ms. Stuhl: I'm trying to think why we
stopped going to the branches.

Ms. Higgins: Bookmobiles were in a state
of disrepair at that point, weren't they?

Ms. Stuhl: And they were all building
libraries, and they were busy, and they just didn't feel like it. It went
on for quite a while, but we used to exchange collections at the members.
But after a while it became a problem and they sometimes forget I called
up one or two persons to come to here to pick books. We had this big extension
collection sitting there, and we wanted the librarians to use it. It was
in the basement under the Grand Union building.

Ms. Higgins: That was the genesis of
the system whereby the branch librarians came to the extension collection.

Ms. Stuhl: They could come in whenever
they wanted, and then I started setting up a schedule. I saved some carpet
we took out at home and I brought it down there, because the basement
was damp. Nobody really liked being in the basement too long, but the
carpet made it a little more homey, and this space provided a place where
we could put the new books before they were shelved in the general collection.

Ms. Higgins: Even with all your degrees
in sciences and librarianship, it seems to me that your chief contribution
has been a major, major public relations effort between the library and
the public, library branches, and library members?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, part of it. I'm very
conscious of having to please the customer.

Ms. Higgins: Can you tell us about building
the headquarters library here in Manalapan?

Ms. Stuhl: Well, I'll tell you first
more about the Eastern Branch. We were sued.

Ms. Higgins: The County was sued?

Ms. Stuhl: Yes. They delayed building
for I don't know how long because of the Freeholders and the exempt libraries.
(The towns that had libraries that did not belong to the county were called
exempt because they were exempt from the county library tax. Ed.) They
felt that using general county funds to build the Eastern Branch library
was not legal. In other words, they were paying for some of this. It took
a long time and much litigation till that was resolved. Their residents
can use the library, nobody stops them from using the library. They just
can't borrow a book, but they're not paying for the books. This was the
rationale. The rationale worked, and they went ahead, but then they hit
clay or something that also made a problem with Eastern Branch building.
It took a while to straighten that up. Eventually we moved into Eastern
Branch and didn't close any libraries because their businesses dropped
off. Eastern Branch took off by itself, and they added to it.

Ms. Higgins: Are we going to add to
it again?

Ms. Stuhl: They are going to add to
the meeting room because the meeting room is so small.

Mr. Stuhl: Yes. You know Jack started
the jazz programs at the library. Anna was working at least two or three
Sundays a month part of the year.

Ms. Stuhl: For all of the years that
the jazz program was at Eastern Branch. This was volunteer work. We did
not get paid for it, we did not get time off, nothing. It was just Morey
Berger, Jack Livingstone, and myself who were there every week, every
time they had the program.

Ms. Higgins: That's simply a remarkable
contribution.

Ms. Stuhl: As I said, it's been my labor
of love.

Ms. Higgins: By this time your children
were how old?

Ms. Stuhl: My youngest would've
been eight or nine years old. The oldest would've been nineteen.

Mr. Stuhl: I used to go with you to
the programs.

Ms. Stuhl: Not always but sometimes.

Mr. Stuhl: Almost always.

Ms. Higgins: Didn't they make coffee?

Ms. Stuhl: That's for jazz week. I used
to make coffee and buy doughnuts. Between the jazz concert on Saturday
night and the jazz sespers that we used to have, I served coffee.

Ms. Higgins: Again, another famous institution:
jazz concerts.

Mr. Stuhl: We have friends living in
our development now who used to come from Brooklyn to the jazz concerts.

Ms. Stuhl: They still come to all the
concerts.

Ms. Higgins: Of course the price was
right, too. Everything was free.

Ms. Stuhl: The price was right, and
the people performing were well known to people in New York. Better
than here.

Mr. Stuhl: In those days, it took over
an hour to get there from New York.

Ms. Stuhl: This Headquarters building
was also built in part because of the pressure by the Friends. You have
to give the Donowitz' credit because they used to go to the Freeholders
meetings and they really pushed for a Western facility. We didn't have
too many legal difficulties this time.

Mr. Stuhl: You got the land donated.

Ms. Stuhl: They tried to get Freehold
Township to donate land.

Mr. Stuhl: There was a smart mayor in
Manalapan.

Ms. Stuhl: And he came up with the land,
so the Freeholders had to take it. So that's how this location came about.

Anna Stuhl
at the groundbreaking ceremony, 1984

Mr. Stuhl: How could you turn down free
land?

Ms. Higgins: It's a difficult site,
but they seem to have worked around it.

Mr. Stuhl: It worked out nice. They
had a good architect.

Ms. Stuhl: Well, we didn't think so
all the time. But Jim Farady was nice to work with. I was involved
with the planning of this building. I retired in 1985 and they opened
in 1986 here.

Ms. Higgins: Of course the library development
in both Shrewsbury and Manalapan is the result of the tremendous population
explosion in Monmouth County. Can you tell us something about how life
was in Monmouth County in the 1940s and 1950s compared to how it is now?
Like transportation: did you go to Red Bank much?

Ms. Stuhl: Not too much. We went to
Asbury Park.

Mr. Stuhl: Shopping in Asbury Park,
certainly, and not only Steinbachs. Asbury Park was just a lovely little
town. And it's just something that happened all over the United States
where all the little towns folded all over, except Red Bank.

Ms. Stuhl: Red Bank's probably the only
town that remained.

Ms. Higgins: Freehold's doing all right.

Ms. Stuhl: Freehold's doing all right.
But Freehold is the County Seat, so it attracts people from all over.
The courts are here, there's business. We were living very close to Asbury.

Ms. Higgins: Did you go ocean bathing?

Ms. Stuhl: Not much. I'm not much of
a sun worshipper. Once in a while.

Mr. Stuhl: I went to the YMCA in Asbury
Park swimming and playing ball.

Ms. Higgins: Asbury Park had a good
boardwalk.

Mr. Stuhl: Yes, we went on the boardwalk.
I had lived in Brighton Beach as a kid, but I didn't go to the ocean very
much, I went to the pool to swim and I played handball.

Ms. Higgins: How about your children?

Ms. Stuhl: They're all swimmers.

Mr. Stuhl: Well, they went to camp.

Ms. Stuhl: They went to camp. They went
to Happy Time Day Camp, which I believe is still here down on Route 537.

Ms. Higgins: What kind of a camp was
it?

Ms. Stuhl: They came and they picked
them up. In Freehold, I think not at the house. This was all in Howell.
When we moved to the shore, we were one mile from the ocean. They could
bicycle when they were older. They all love it still. My oldest has a
home down on Long Beach Island because she loves the ocean, and the other
two come visit because they love the ocean.

Ms. Higgins: It's a good place to bring
up children.

Ms. Stuhl: Oh, yes, the nice thing about
the chicken farm is that the children knew their father. He was in and
out of the house. If he babysat he took the children into the coop
with him. He put them on the conveyor, and the kids would sit on that
and they rolled on through the chicken coop.

Mr. Stuhl: The older ones have a little
memory of it.

Ms. Higgins: Sounds like fun.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, well, I didn't like
the chicken farm.

Mr. Stuhl: Coming from the city, to
me, farming was great. You could do things you couldn't do in the city,
and I wish I would've had more sense. I would've been gardening. In those
days I didn't garden.

Ms. Stuhl: Now he gardens.

Ms. Higgins: Maybe you could tell us
some recollections of George and Doris Handzo.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, I miss them. I really
do. I don't know how many times a day I think of them you know or something
comes up and I say, "Doris used to say this or that." I met
them because Colts Neck was talking of a library shortly when Julia Killian
was still director, so shortly after I started working. We were invited
by a family in Colts Neck. I can't remember the people's name who invited
us. George and Doris were invited also, and Julia came, and we discussed
the possibility of having a branch in Colts Neck. Doris wasn't a librarian
yet. She was going to library school.

Mr. Stuhl: Was she teaching school?

Ms. Stuhl: No, she taught school before
she got married. Doris' first job was actually at the Ocean Township Library.
She was our first branch library director.

Ms. Stuhl: Doris worked a bit at Wall,
too. I worked all the branches, at least Saturdays. We rotated branch
librarians. That's also my deed, because I thought they should know each
others' collections. I mean it's worked for me. I don't try to interfere.

Ms. Higgins: So when did you first meet
Doris Handzo? Back when they were down in Colts Neck?

Ms. Stuhl: In the early 1960s, I can't
remember the exact year. But we did nothing about a branch. I put a bookmobile in Colts Neck at that point. We put in a bookmobile stop near
school and another one near the reservoir, whatever that development was
called, I forgot: maybe Phalanx. There were new developments in there.
And they worked; not as busy as some other places, but they're all rich
people in Colts Neck so they go to Barnes and Noble. I was amazed to see
so many people tour through the place and walk out the door.

Ms. Higgins: Did you say Doris became
a librarian?

Ms. Stuhl: Doris somewhere in that point
was either going to school at that time. I didn't discuss much. I did
not know her well. But by the time she finished library school, we were
opening up the Ocean Township Branch. I talked to her and she came in
as director and she did a beautiful job. Through the course of the years,
she became my friend. We were very close friends at the end. George became
Mayor of Colts Neck; he had always been involved in politics and he was
on the school board too, before I met him. And then he became interested
in town administration.

Ms. Higgins: He was the Township Manager.

Ms. Stuhl: First he was mayor. Afterwards,
when he retired, he became the Township Manager. And when he was Township
Manager we got the library in Colts Neck.

Ms. Higgins: I think the Handzos, like
the Stuhls, are just another example of the quiet people who have made
such a tremendous impact in this county, and for the good. I think you
should both feel very good about that.

Ms. Stuhl: Well Doris was very, very
helpful. They were nice people and I'm still in touch with their children.
If we go to Texas this next Fall as we planned, we will go look them up.

Ms. Higgins: I ask people some "what
were you doing" questions, just to kind of put some pins into the
20th century. Let's start with FDR: Where you were when FDR died? and
then Kennedy?

Ms. Stuhl: I was in Canada. I was not
here. My grandmother was in the nursing home she was in a coma and it
was pretty quiet and then all of a sudden this lady screamed, "Roosevelt
died." And a patient, who was a younger woman who had jumped from
a burning fire on the second floor, was paralyzed. But her head was all
right. She was in the same nursing home. And she heard that on her radio,
and of course that made an impact. My grandmother died the day after.

Ms. Higgins: And then when Kennedy died?

Ms. Stuhl: When Kennedy died, I was
substituting in the Howell Nursery School where my children were going.
It's down on Emmons Ave. and the mothers would take turns. I was there
substituting being outdoors with young children in the yard, and the neighbor
came over and told us about JFK.

Mr. Stuhl: I don't remember where I
was when Roosevelt died. I do remember where I was when Pearl Harbor came.

Ms. Higgins: Where were you?

Mr. Stuhl: I was painting the chicken
coop that Sunday morning, and I came in the house and they told me that
the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I was teaching shop in Keyport when
Kennedy was shot.

Ms. Higgins: Were the children aware
of the magnitude of this?

Mr. Stuhl: No, I don't think so.

Ms. Stuhl: For Kennedy's funeral, I
remember we went to our neighbors, the Bragars, and all the kids were
there and sat and watched the whole thing.

Mr. Stuhl: Well, they did such a job
on Kennedy's funeral with the train, you know, then in Washington with
the ceremony, and the coffin, with the rifle, and the riderless horse.

Ms. Stuhl: And they had TV by then.

Ms. Higgins: Your lives have seen a
lot of technology. You and I were talking about the television, because
when you were growing up there was no television.

Ms. Stuhl: I didn't even have a telephone
in Europe. I did have a telephone in Canada.

Ms. Higgins: No jet planes.

Ms. Stuhl: No planes. No, we came here
by boat.

Ms. Higgins: And of course back and
forth you went.

Ms. Stuhl: I crossed the Atlantic three
times.

Ms. Higgins: God bless your mother.
So, Al what would you say are some of the big things in technology that
you can look back on in the 20th century?

Mr. Stuhl: Well, communications have
made a big difference. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages,
and as you get older, you get to see the disadvantages. To see the way
Anna worked in the library, and to see the way it's done today. It's just
too big to be personal. And more or less, the families are split up today
because kids take jobs all over the country. There's opportunities all
over. These are the big changes that I see in personal lives. Then communications
and the fact that information is all over the place. In fact at my age--
I'm approaching seventy-eight--and I can see where there's a flood of
information. I can't even keep up with it. I can't keep up with the reading
I want to do. It's changed so much. I feel sorry for these native peoples
and others who just try to retain their culture, which is so different
from what we have today. And I say why don't they just decide that they
have to give up a little bit and accommodate to the dominant culture,
and still hold on to the culture. Those are the things that affect people
today. We have everything on the Internet with the punch of a key or a
mouse. There's a lot of advantages to it, and the other hand, there's
disadvantages also. How will things balance out? I don't know. I'm waiting
for someone to write a book explaining it to me.

Ms. Higgins: Well, we all have to find
our place in this sea of information.

Mr. Stuhl: You have no choice. This
is it. We finally got computers.

Ms. Stuhl:I'm learning to use computers.

Ms. Higgins: Tell us more details about
the poultry farming years in Monmouth County.

Mr. Stuhl: Well, it seems that we had
a very good market in the city of New York. I think most of our eggs from
this area went to New York; possibly some other areas fed to Philadelphia.
But basically, we couldn't probably supply the whole market. So there's
no problem. There was room for so many farmers and everybody's eggs would
be sold in New York, except people who had different routes. The really
good thing about the farming is the way of life. We had cooperation. When
we were small in the beginning we worked together on different tasks,
such as vaccinating chickens, housing chickens, and I remember separating
the baby chicks, things like that. We did it in a group. We'd get together,
and it really was nice. When I came back from the army, people had expanded.
You started having professional vaccinators, and people would have to
hire help, it was more than just a family farm after a while. And being
on the farm was nice: you raised your children.

Ms. Higgins: It was a good living.

Mr. Stuhl: It was a good way of life.
But like everything else it couldn't last. Because things have to grow,
and as things grow there have to be changes.

Ms. Higgins: I see a parallel with the
library world and the farming world.

Mr. Stuhl: When people started with
dairy farms, the family would work on the dairy farm and the kids would
stay there. When the kids started moving out, you'd have to get help,
and the next thing you know you were employing people.

Ms. Higgins: It was business.

Mr. Stuhl: And it was business, and
you had to do it in the business way, and business has to grow. It doesn't
stay still. And when it grows, it gets impersonal. That's the problem.

Ms. Higgins: What were your recollections
of the Roosevelt years?

Mr. Stuhl: The NRA was Roosevelt's program
to get us out of the Depression. I remember when people's furniture used
to be put on the street if they couldn't pay the rent. I'll never forget
that when it happened to a friend of ours. He and I just took a nice long
walk on the Boardwalk to the Coney Island, stayed away for the whole day
until the adults figured out where to put the furniture.

Ms. Higgins: This was in the 1930s.

Mr. Stuhl: This was the 1930s.

Ms. Higgins: Trying to pull out of the
Depression.

Mr. Stuhl: Well, we pulled out of the
Depression when the war started actually. Because in 1937 they had what
they called the recession. It was a period when things were moving up
slightly. Roosevelt was putting people to work with WPA, PWA, and the
CCC. So people had something to do. That helped the economy a little bit,
but then there was this recession in 1937 and then the war came around.
By 1940, I'm sure military manufacturing became involved, I don't know.

Ms. Higgins: Eisner's right in Red Bank
made military uniforms. It was a big influence in our county.

Mr. Stuhl: I remember when Roosevelt
was packing the court, trying to pack the court, to get some of his things
through, because he had a very conservative court, and they didn't want
to make any changes. He was trying to get enough people on it so that
he could get a majority vote and, of course, it was unconstitutional.

Ms. Higgins: Well, you were pretty young
then to be aware of all that going on.

Mr. Stuhl: Well, I was about ten or
twelve years old. I remember that.

Ms. Higgins: Do you remember anything
about the Roosevelt town when it was built?

Mr. Stuhl: Roosevelt, New Jersey?

Ms. Higgins: Yes, our little town here
in Monmouth County.

Mr. Stuhl: Yes, we've been there because
Anna put a couple of little libraries there.

Ms. Stuhl: We had a station there, too.
We had a library there.

Mr. Stuhl: And we saw there a mural
by Ben Shahn. Nice little town. They're having problems today, though,
just surviving.

Ms. Higgins: Maybe what your talking
about here is another theme: trying to stay small is not always the solution.

Ms. Stuhl: But it's a different town
now. It still retains some of the artists and people like that.

Mr. Stuhl: I forget what the problem
was. It was in the paper recently that they are having a big financial
problem, I guess.

Ms. Higgins: They are trying to maintain
their own police force.

Ms. Stuhl: Which is hard to do. It's
the same thing with libraries. They're not very much involved anymore,
but they still do something with the library and are still considered
a member. We used take the bookmobile out there every other week.

Ms. Higgins: Seems like if anyone in
Monmouth County wanted a book, Monmouth County Library would get it to
them one way or another.

Mr. Stuhl: Well, the way things are
now, you can get books from anyplace. I mean libraries are all connected.
It's amazing. So that's a really great advantage.

Ms. Higgins: Do you remember anything
about the troubles at Fort Monmouth? Can you talk about that a little
bit?

Mr. Stuhl: Yes. You're talking about
the McCarthy era. I met a guy who was involved with the whole business,
and I knew some people who became farmers. One lost his job, never went
back. I know that not one case held. There was not one case where McCarthy
succeeded in finding anybody in the left wing or anything.

Ms. Higgins: But there were a lot of
lives really seriously interrupted.

Mr. Stuhl: Messed up a lot of people.

Ms. Higgins: Ira Katchen was the attorney
for that. You weren't personally affected, but you knew people?

Mr. Stuhl: No, we were on the farm;
we had nothing to do with it. I met some people afterwards who went through
it.

Ms. Stuhl: Yes, every once in a while
you meet somebody who remembers that.

Mr. Stuhl: Murray Miller never said
anything about it, and I don't recall asking him.

Ms. Stuhl: Beth Miller's father was
one of the commissioners here. He was on the Ocean Township library board.
He was very influential getting Ocean Township to become a branch of the
County Library.

Mr. Stuhl: Murray Miller.

Ms. Higgins: Murray Miller was at the
fort?

Mr. Stuhl: Oh, yes.

Ms. Stuhl: He worked at the fort.

Ms. Higgins: As you look at the 21st
century unrolling, even as we speak here, we're almost at the end of March,
what would you like to tell to people who might be listening to this tape
or reading the transcription in fifty or seventy-five years? You've lived
a while, you've had some experiences! What would you like to pass on to
them in terms of some advice?

Ms. Stuhl: I think all people are important
and they should become considerate of one another and be tolerant.

Mr. Stuhl: They should appreciate diversity,
and have a great measure of tolerance for diversity, and everything would
be much better. The other thing, unfortunately, there's nothing much you
can do about it, but when all the women started working, and you had help
taking care of the children that's not family oriented. We are so far
away from what has been done in Europe as far as taking care of families.
We talk about families and we don't care a bit about them. Because if
we did, we'd let people have flex hours so that they could raise their
children, and there would be less pressure, because it takes two to make
a living now, and I don't think that they are living that much better
with two working than when one used to work.

Ms. Stuhl: It's very expensive to live
now days. I can remember my kids when babysitting was fifty cents an hour
and not always that much. Now it's five dollars an hour.

Mr. Stuhl: It was a quarter an hour
when we started with kids.

Ms. Stuhl: It becomes a problem; you
go out one night once in a blue moon and it costs a fortune for young
people.

Mr. Stuhl: How do you go out when you
have to pay five or six dollars an hour to go out? You spend fifteen or
twenty dollars before you even turn around to eat or go to a movie, so
you have to make a lot of money to afford that, and not everybody is making
that kind of money. That's the biggest point that Robert Reich made. The
former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, Robert Reich
wrote in his book, " that spread between the rich and the poor is
getting greater and that is a danger." And he tried to make Clinton
aware of this. I don't think Clinton ever appreciated it, and I don't
see anybody else on the scene who will do anything about it, and that
is the problem that we are going to face in this century. We still have
something like twenty percent of the kids below the poverty level. That's
terrible in the richest country in the world.

Ms. Higgins: That's definitely a project
for the 21st century along with increasing tolerance. Anna, would you
add anything to that?

Ms. Stuhl: Well, I'm not so politically
in touch.

Mr. Stuhl: That's not political, that's
dealing with families. How are families doing?

Ms. Stuhl: Well, families have much
worse problems now.

Mr. Stuhl: We've got single parent families
in this country to the extent that we never had. In the worst period of
the Depression, families stuck together. Now you've got I think maybe
one-quarter to one-third of the kids are living with a single parent in
a house.

Ms. Stuhl: That's one of the problems
you're going to have to work at in the 21st century.